In addition to our normal news coverage, What Now Atlanta is tracking ways Atlanta’s businesses are adapting to the novel coronavirus and the challenges it brings to brick-and-mortars.
Governor Brian Kemp on Thursday signed the “Empowering a Healthy Georgia” Executive Order, the state’s latest response to COVID-19.
The new mandate goes into effect at 12 a.m. on June 16, 2020, and runs through 11:59 p.m. on June 30, 2020, lifting a gamut of restrictions placed on citizens and businesses earlier this year.
Among the order’s highlights is the ability for restaurants to continue operating at normal capacity (no longer a cap based on square footage) and salad bars and buffets can resume service.
Restaurant employees are also no longer required to wear face coverings except for when interacting with guests directly and bars can now have fifty people (up from twenty-five) or thirty-five percent of total listed fire capacity, whichever is greater.
The original list of 39 safety guidelines for reopening restaurants has been reduced to 35 under the new order (read them here on pages nine and 10 of the EO).
Other brick-and-mortar businesses including movie theatres and beauty operations are also getting an easement in restrictions.
There will no longer be a limit on the number of people who may sit together in a movie theatre and walk-ins will be allowed at body art studios, barbershops, hair salons, their respective schools, massage therapy establishments, and tanning facilities.
Live Performance Venues starting on July 1 may reopen for business if it “complies with specific criteria” which is outlined in the executive order here.
Click here to read the executive order in its entirety.
[Editor’s note: The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is rapidly evolving as is its effect on Atlanta, and the City’s businesses and its residents. Click here for What Now Atlanta’s ongoing coverage of the crisis. For guidance and updates on the pandemic, please visit the C.D.C. website.]
5 Responses
I thought KLB said Phase One was voluntary.
This guy is just a testosterne-poisioned control freak.
He didn’t sue any other cities in GA that had similar guidelines.
And from my understanding he didn’t sue the COA, he sued KLB, and the City Council.
What a d!ck…
It seems he might have a problem with (Black) women in charge…
Oh hush that’s bogus and assumptive to say the least. This has nothing to do with being a woman of color nor if he has a problem with the later. KLB ( as you all call her) was going to literally break the small business! Which would have put thousands out of work creating a ripple affect from there. So hush! You can’t go backwards to phase 1 and force mask wearing in public ( which doesn’t stop or curve a “virus”). There is something else going on here and the Governor is standing up against it for ALL small business owners of ALL colors again stop trying to play the race card this would have messed everyone up that owns a small business .
Oh please, you told me to hush the last time I mentioned this.
Read the article, the reopening rollback was voluntary. KLB was not shutting small businesses down.
She was trying to make masks mandatory in public spaces (grocery stores etc). What’s the big deal with that?
Kemp didn’t sue the Mayors of Athens and Savannah, which made similar requirements.
Race aside, Kemp is the shake boy for Pence/Trump. And we know how those two think about women. One likes to grab them by the puzzy, and the other calls his wife Mother.
Kemp’s lawsuit was a power play– it’s not about the concern for anybody’s health or small business.
Granted, Kemp wants to keep the Georgia financial engine running, but I think the Mayor and the rest of us want to do that as well– safely.
Kemp’s a big southern macho man wannabe who doesn’t like a woman that appears to override his authority (remember his campaign ads with his guns and pick-em up truck?).
KLB has the balls Kemp wishes he had.
Dingus-ery